Global evangelism was the basis for William Booth’s construction of The Salvation Army. His implicit ecclesiology was marked by a radical “absolutism” manifested in a totalizing military system of polity. Booth was the General of this system explaining that “confidence in God and in me are absolutely indispensable.” The theological foundation for this kind of system was his desire for “the salvation of the world.” These evangelistic sentiments were an expression of his personal eschatology (the end of persons) which eclipsed his ecclesiology. He regularly said that the Army would not “be made a church,” even though it fulfilled all the functions of the church from its inception, including the traditional Protestant sacraments from 1865 to 1883. In 1883 he abandoned the traditional sacraments because his Army was a “force for Salvation purposes,” and as such the sacraments were an “unnecessary” distraction from the Army’s task of global evangelism. This paper will analyze the implicit ecclesiology of William Booth, which developed in the shadow of his personal eschatology.
Even though it now identifies as a “branch of the universal Christian church,” the contemporary Salvation Army has inherited this ecclesiology and doubled down on Booth’s non-sacramentalism. Some scholars have identified this non-sacramentalism as a “heresy of neglect.” This paper will demonstrate that Booth’s evangelistic focus became the foundation for an ambiguous ecclesiology, which to this day reduces the Army’s ecumenical capacity.